HYDROGRAPHY, PAST AND PRESENT. 231 



surveying service ; and expressed an earnest hope that the days of false 

 economy and lamentable neglect of enterprises of discovery and survey 

 were numbered. In the following July he showed that although one 

 of the most obvious duties of a country with an extensive seaboard and 

 a great sea-borne trade is to provide for the safety of vessels frequenting 

 her ports, by the provision of lighthouses and buoys, and, above all, by 

 the preparation of reliable charts and sailing directions, yet nothing had 

 been done for a space of twelve years for the coasts of our Indian Empire. 

 In February 1875, Captain Hull read an able paper at the Royal United 

 Service Institution, in which he especially drew attention to the un- 

 surveyed parts of the world. The Army and Navy Gazette has also taken 

 the matter up, and on the 22nd of last March published a letter from 

 « An Old Officer,' headed ' The One Man Needful.' This letter pointed out 

 that when a competent successor to the late Admiral Bedford was 

 required at the Board of Trade, it appeared that such a man was not to 

 be found in England. The only man said to be fit was Sir George Nares, 

 who was then in command of the Alert surveying the Straits of Magellan. 

 Sir George, who is apparently a sort of hydrographic Sir Garnet 

 Wolseley, was accordingly taken out of the Alert, just as in 1874 he was 

 taken out of the Challenger to command the Arctic Expedition, in both 

 cases leaving his work to be carried on by his executors, or the men he 

 left behind him. The reason for this is obvious ; in place of the nine and 

 twenty captains and commanders, from whom, in 1854, competent men 

 might have been selected either to command Arctic expeditions, to fill the 

 place of Admiral Bedford at the Board of Trade, or that of Sir George 

 Nares in the Straits of Magellan, we have now only two. One great evil 

 arising from the want of trained men of the required rank is that the 

 surveying service continually suffers demoralisation from the appointment 

 of inexperienced chiefs, who are obliged to learn their duties from their 

 juniors, a proceeding curiously at variance with the general tone of this 

 age of competition. 



At the present time the Hydrographical Department of the Admiralty 

 consists of twenty-four individuals, including the hydrographer and four 

 messengers and packers. The expenses of the department are provided 

 for under Vote V, whieh includes several other branches of the scientific 

 service. The total grant for the scientific branch was 120,35 71. in 

 1861-62, and 106,04R in 1878-79, a deplorable redaction of more than 

 14,000Z., which represents a proportionate decrease in the amount of 

 useful work done. And yet, as I shall presently show, the Hydrographic 

 Office is in a great measure self-supporting, and might be made still more 

 so by the ordinary mercantile expedient of increasing the size of an 

 establishment to meet the requirements of customers. 



It is beyond the scope of this paper to enter fully into the manifold 

 duties of the department, but amongst the most important are the follow- 

 ing: — To execute accurate surveys of all parts of the world that are 

 visited by British ships ; to prepare and publish these surveys in the form 

 of charts ; to write and publish sailing directions to accompany the charts ; 

 to collect, compile, and promptly publish all hydrographic information ; 

 and to keep the charts and other nautical documents corrected up to the 

 latest dates. It is also the duty of the department not only to supply 

 Her Majesty's ships, but also to see that there are always sufficient 

 charts and nautical works to meet the public demand. It will give some 

 idea of the extent of this demand to state that on an average upwards of 



